Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Rebounding tips from Dennis Rodman, Larry Miller and Ollie Taylor

Dennis Rodman's new book, I Should Be Dead By Now, is filled with stories of his adventures/misadventures involving drinking, gambling and women. The real golden nuggets for serious basketball fans are a few passages buried near the end in which Rodman explains his approach to rebounding. When the only player to ever win seven straight NBA rebounding titles discusses his craft, I pay attention. Rodman's thoughts inspired me to write an article about rebounding as seen through the eyes of accomplished rebounders. I supplemented Rodman's brief comments from his book with concepts gathered from my interviews with Larry Miller and Ollie Taylor. Miller is one of the greatest players in ACC history and he averaged over 9 rpg at North Carolina despite standing only 6-4. During his ABA career he averaged more rebounds per minute than accomplished backcourt rebounders Jerry West, Michael Jordan, Sidney Moncrief and Kobe Bryant. Taylor led San Jacinto to the 1968 National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) championship and then took Houston to the Sweet 16 in 1970. The 6-2 Taylor was a powerful rebounder in college; during his ABA career he averaged even more rebounds per minute than Miller, nearly matching the legendary Oscar Robertson in this category.

Dennis Rodman is a Phi Beta Kappa student of basketball who seemingly wants everyone to believe that he is the class clown. His most recent book, "I Should Be Dead By Now," contains a lot of tales of drinking, gambling and women and drinking while gambling with women and, well, you get the idea. The five-time NBA champion who is the only player to lead the league in rebounding for seven straight seasons says very little about the game that he played so proficiently at the highest level of competition--and that is truly a shame, because the few morsels he provides whet one’s appetite for more.

Rodman devotes less than two pages to explaining his rebounding prowess. He states that while traditional coaching theory extols the virtues of boxing out he rarely if ever did so because he was a 6-foot-6, 220-pound player going against much taller and bigger opponents; he felt that if he attempted to box out Shaquille O’Neal or other behemoths that they would just reach right over his head and get the ball before he could do anything.

Rodman’s approach was to apply judo techniques to basketball; he would interlock his arms and legs with his opponents until he could determine where the ball was going to go and then he would use his quickness and agility to untangle himself and get to the ball. The added benefit of his style was that it annoyed his opponents, who soon were focusing more attention on battling Rodman than pursuing the ball.

What Rodman doesn’t mention is that he also spent a lot of time watching film of his teammates’ shots and his opponents’ shots in order to determine which players’ shots tended to rebound long or short. I confirmed this with Rodman’s former Chicago Bulls teammate Steve Kerr, who agreed with my contention that Rodman was a student of the game who does not like to publicize that aspect of his personality. While Rodman has not seen fit to explain at length his ideas about rebounding, I have discussed the subject with two great undersized rebounders from a previous era: Larry Miller and Ollie Taylor.

Larry Miller is one of only two players to win two ACC Player of the Year Awards and two ACC Tournament MVPs. The 6-4 Miller was able to rebound in traffic against bigger opponents; in a 91-72 North Carolina rout of undefeated St. Bonaventure in the 1968 NCAA Tournament he outscored Hall of Fame center Bob Lanier 27-23 and outrebounded him 16-9. Miller averaged 21.8 ppg and 9.2 rpg during his Tar Heel career. In his seven ABA seasons he averaged more rebounds per minute than All-Star guards Jerry West, Michael Jordan, Sidney Moncrief and Kobe Bryant did during their careers.

Miller says that a big part of rebounding is positioning: “We learned that a lot at Carolina. I practiced a lot. I took pride in practicing rebounding.” His relentless workout regimen enabled him to improve his vertical leap tremendously: “I used to jump with weights on, 20 pound weights. I worked at it really hard. In high school, when I was a little thinner, I was just starting to learn what I could do and I could put both elbows on the rim at the same time. You're also talking about having canvas shoes and jumping from cement floors basically, because those gym floors were like parquet over cement and there was no give, no spring."

According to Miller, the ability to read the ball in flight and anticipate where it is going to go is vital to being a good rebounder: "I think that it is partly inherited, like hand-eye coordination. I still have that. If I drop something or something falls, I can still snatch it out of mid air. We used to have a test when Coach (Dean) Smith was recruiting you. He'd put a dollar bill between two fingers, let it drop and see if you could catch it. It was just a little test. It wasn't a big thing, 'see if you can do this,' but they did that to all of the recruits. Slip a dollar bill between your forefinger and your thumb and you don't know when he is going to drop it, right? Try it on somebody sometime and just see if they can do it. I mean you can do it if you are doing it to yourself (because you know when you are going to drop it) but try it on somebody else. I could catch it as soon as he did it. I still have that part.

"I played a little baseball and--nobody ever taught me this--I would always watch the baseball from the pitcher's hand, instead of reacting to what happened after it hit the bat. I would watch the ball as it was leaving our pitcher's hand, so I could see the ball and then see when it hit the bat, so I could anticipate where it would go, as opposed to reacting to when it was hit. It is the same thing with any ball. When playing a game with a ball and the ball goes up, I used to watch the ball and anticipate where it was going to go--I could kind of judge if it was going to hit the front or the side or go over."

Doing this enabled Miller to get a head start over his opponents. He adds, "Maybe everyone wasn't following it the way I was. It's like a game within a game, I guess. I'm sure a lot of major league players do that same thing. Like I say, they watch the ball as soon as it gets out of a guy's hand. That's a big part of it. You're reacting, but you've got to react to where the ball is. If you don't follow the ball and you just go after it later, at the last second, you're behind already. If it's an outside pitch and a guy swings at it, then it might go to right field. It's something that I still do when I watch games. I can watch a game--a basketball game especially--and I can kind of sense where the ball might be going."

Miller believes that his baseball experiences translated to the basketball court: “Basically, most sports are hand-eye. If you are blessed with that part, you really have a head start."

In an interview with The Sporting News, Houston Coach Guy Lewis once noted, “Ollie Taylor out-jumped Alcindor (UCLA’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) at the start of the game. He was 6-2 and played the post for me. One of the best post players I ever had.”

Those are pretty strong words considering that Lewis coached Hall of Famers Elvin Hayes, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler (a college forward who mainly played guard in the NBA). Taylor led the Cougars to a 25-5 record and Sweet 16 appearance as a senior in 1969-70, averaging 24.4 ppg and 11.5 rpg. He was selected as a Helms Foundation All-American that year. Taylor averaged 22.0 ppg and 10.3 rpg in 56 games at Houston.

Before playing for Houston, Taylor set the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) record for points in a season (1409 in 1967-68; 30.7 ppg) and a career (2456; 26.2 ppg). He was inducted in the NJCAA Hall of Fame in 1994; other NJCAA Hall of Famers include Bob McAdoo, Spencer Haywood, Artis Gilmore, Larry Johnson and Shawn Marion. Taylor led San Jacinto to the national title in 1967-68, setting the school’s single game scoring record that year with a 53 point effort.

Taylor played at DeWitt Clinton High School with Hall of Famer Nate “Tiny” Archibald and was on a Rucker League team with Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Charlie Scott and Billy Paultz. Taylor’s rebounds per minute average during his ABA career was even better than Miller’s and virtually identical to the average posted by the legendary Oscar Robertson during his Hall of Fame career.

Taylor says, “I jumped center every year that I was in college. The thing that made me different from a lot of other guys who could jump was that I was physically strong. When you rebound, you have to be strong. I played guard and I played forward. I guarded (George) McGinnis and Dan Issel and--while my leaping ability played a part--my physical strength really made the difference. You have to be able to leap in a crowd. If you can’t move people off of you it doesn’t matter how high you can jump. I loved to rebound. It was a thrill.”

There is a lot more to rebounding than being strong or a powerful leaper. Taylor explains, “The secret to rebounding is you have to read the apex of the ball. Once it reaches it’s apex you can judge whether it’s long or short. The second thing is you have to determine who is shooting the ball. If it is a good shooter, you have two choices: it’s going to be short or it’s going to be long. You try to get to the side of the basket where the ball is likely to go.”

When a bad shooter shoots, Taylor notes, “It’s just pot luck. You don’t know what part of the rim he is going to hit. A good shooter either hits the front or the back of the rim (when he misses). If it hits the back it’s going to be a long rebound, if it hits the front it’s going to be a short rebound.”

Taylor adds, “You read the rotation of the ball. If it’s a guy like Rick (Barry) shooting then you know the ball is going to have a lot of backspin on it. If it hits the back of the rim it’s going to go deep; if it hits the front of the rim it’s going to hang around there because of the backspin. You look at all of those aspects and then you pick the spot on the floor that you want to get to and then you fight for that spot. You have to want to do it. I loved it because it was body on body, man to man. The real key is to read the ball at its apex and read the trajectory of the ball to see if it is going to come down short or long.”

On the surface it is hard to imagine three more different players than Dennis Rodman, Larry Miller and Ollie Taylor but the one thing that they had in common was an ability to rebound. Accurately reading the flight of the ball, fighting for position, quickness and strength all played a part in their success on the boards. Rodman was a high flyer early in his career but even as an older player he was still an exceptional rebounder; this shows that while jumping ability certainly is useful for rebounding it is not the most important thing.

The best rebounders have a knack for figuring out where the ball is going to go and a combination of tenacity and quickness in beating other players to that spot.

Monday, February 27, 2006

More Article Links

I have made some changes to the "Links to My Articles at Other Sites" portion of 20 Second Timeout. I have replaced the link to the main page of Basketball Spotlight with links to each of my feature articles and interviews there. This makes it easier for 20 Second Timeout readers to access my pieces about NBA defense, James "Captain Late" Silas, Antoine Walker and much more. I have also created separate sections for links to my 2005 playoff preview articles and 2005-2006 regular season preview articles, so my predictions can be easily found.

On Sunday, NBA fans were treated to an ABC-NBA TV-ESPN triple header: Detroit beat Cleveland 90-78 in game one, Houston defeated Orlando 89-84 in game two and Boston outlasted the Lakers 112-111 in game three.

The trade deadline has already passed but the Cleveland Cavaliers' real problem is that the player that they need was in his prime almost 30 years ago: power forward/enforcer Maurice Lucas. He would have known how to respond when Detroit's Rasheed Wallace clocked Cavs' center Zydrunas Ilgauskas in the head early in the game, opening a wound that required 10 stitches. Wallace was called for a flagrant foul 1, despite his pleas to the referees that the contact was incidental and that he was trying to make a play on the ball. That was not true, as Wallace admitted after the game that he was retaliating for an earlier Ilgauskas elbow: "I'm not going to start cracking a guy in the skull if I didn't get elbowed first," Wallace said. Here is Ilgauskas' take on the situation: "I got him first with an elbow, but it was unintentional. I made my free throws and came out of the game (to get stitches) because I can't afford getting suspended or thrown out (for retaliating)." No one on the Cavs went after Wallace during the game and Ilgauskas looked soft and tentative when he came back into the game.

Remember when Xavier McDaniel of the New York Knicks would go after Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan jumped right up in his face? Where was LeBron James when blood is gushing out of his big man's head? If in your face confrontation is not his thing he still could certainly make a point of driving right at Wallace and sending a message. Hubie Brown marveled about a play in which James drove to the hoop and used his body control to elude Rasheed Wallace but I think that James should have put his shoulder into Wallace's chest. One, Wallace might have been called for the foul if he wasn't set and two, even if James were called for a foul he would be delivering an important message. Think back to a couple months ago, when Kobe Bryant took a shot from Memphis' Mike Miller and had to leave the game. Bryant yelled to Miller that he would be back; when Bryant returned he made three straight three pointers to put the Lakers ahead 66-58 and he later delivered a forearm to Miller's throat that cost Bryant a two game suspension. The Lakers lost 100-99 in overtime and also lost both of the games that Bryant was forced to sit out, so clearly Bryant's actions had a cost; on the other hand, no championship player or team will accept being pushed, punched or shoved without responding. Bryant's response was a bit excessive and I'm not saying that Ilgauskas should have punched Wallace but how about delivering a hard foul? Later in the game Ben Wallace caught a lob at the front of the rim and dunked over Ilgauskas. Ben Wallace is a bad free throw shooter, so letting him dunk is a bad play anyway and that would have been a perfect time for Ilgauskas to deliver a hard, clean foul.

What the Cavs desperately need is a player like Maurice Lucas, who played power forward alongside Bill Walton on the 1977 NBA Champion Portland Trail Blazers. Lucas was one of the toughest players in the NBA in the 1970s and 1980s; he once explained in an interview that he would foul a guy early in the game just to see if he was ready to play. It's not about throwing punches, delivering cheap shots or injuring people--it's about making it clear that you won't allow the other team to throw punches, deliver cheap shots or injure your guys. If Ilgauskas is unable or unwilling to deliver that message, then someone else on the team has to step up and do it. The first time Ilgauskas caught the ball in the post against Rasheed Wallace he should have planted an elbow in Wallace's chest, deposited him on the floor and dunked the ball. Let the officials call a charge, a block or nothing--the important thing is to deliver a message to Wallace and every other player who might guard Ilgauskas that he and the Cavs will not be pushed around.

NBA TV decided to make Houston-Orlando a "silent game," broadcasting it without commentators; all viewers heard during the telecast were Orlando's public address announcer and whatever court sounds were picked up by NBA TV's specially placed microphones. The concept is interesting as a novelty, replicating the experience of seeing the game in the arena, but it is also enjoyable to hear an intelligent analyst like Hubie Brown or Doug Collins offer insights on the action. The game itself saw Houston take a huge lead and then hold off a furious Orlando run at the end. The Rockets are 10-2 in February as they try to recover from their slow start. Asked about playing against his former team, Houston star McGrady replied, "They let one individual (former club president John Weisbrod) screw the whole organization up. It took awhile for everybody to realize that. Everybody thought I wanted out. I'm home. Then you trade Cuttino Mobley? I didn't understand that." Orlando recently acquired Darko Milicic from Detroit; it is too soon to know how good he can be, but a couple plays caught my eye: a touch pass that he delivered to Dwight Howard for a slam dunk and another excellent pass that he threw to Howard in the paint. Milicic clearly sees the floor well and possesses some basketball skills, so it will be interesting to watch his development in Orlando.

Kobe Bryant and Paul Pierce engaged in an old fashioned shootout in the third game and the outcome was not decided until Pierce hit one of two free throws after a Bryant foul with 1.7 seconds left. On the ensuing inbounds play, Luke Walton missed a wide open Lamar Odom under the basket and instead passed to a double-covered Bryant, who missed from 20 feet as time expired. Bryant finished with 40 points, eight rebounds and six assists, while Pierce had 39 points, seven rebounds and four assists. Anyone who asks why Bryant shoots so much should be required to watch tape of this game: Kwame Brown can't catch, Chris Mihm misses point blank shots and Lamar Odom plays passively for long stretches. Bryant frequently drives, attracts two defenders and makes the right pass, but at some point his teammates have to catch the ball and make the shot.

The other NBA news from Sunday is that Kevin Garnett threw a ball into the stands in frustration, hitting a fan in the face. Garnett apologized to the fan, but since the ball hit someone Garnett was automatically ejected and today the NBA fined him $5000. Some have suggested that the NBA should be lenient in this case because Garnett just threw the ball out of frustration and did not mean to hit anyone. I don't know how seriously hurt the fan was or why he was wheeled out on a stretcher--the fans booed because on the surface it looks like he is setting the stage for a lawsuit, but maybe he has some other health problem or a pre-existing injury--but I doubt that the tears of the little girl sitting next to the fan were fake. Garnett's actions are simply unacceptable. There is no reason to throw a ball into the stands and if the ball hits someone then he has to accept the consequences; a $5000 fine for someone who makes $15 million-plus per year seems pretty lenient to me.

About Me

"A work of art contains its verification in itself: artificial, strained concepts do not withstand the test of being turned into images; they fall to pieces, turn out to be sickly and pale, convince no one. Works which draw on truth and present it to us in live and concentrated form grip us, compellingly involve us, and no one ever, not even ages hence, will come forth to refute them."--Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture)

"The most 'popular,' the most 'successful' writers among us (for a brief period, at least) are, 99 times out of a hundred, persons of mere effrontery--in a word, busy-bodies, toadies, quacks."--Edgar Allan Poe

"In chess what counts is what you know, not whom you know. It's the way life is supposed to be, democratic and just."--Grandmaster Larry Evans

"It's not nuclear physics. You always remember that. But if you write about sports long enough, you're constantly coming back to the point that something buoys people; something makes you feel better for having been there. Something of value is at work there...Something is hallowed here. I think that something is excellence."--Tom Callahan